"But 'tis more than that. Were that all, and I came back to you thus, a minute's presence would bridge that gulf. All the old feelings would rush back. Why, if I were but a mere acquaintance whom you had once known in a friendly way, you wouldn't have greeted me so coldly. There would have been cordiality, smiles, a warm clasp of the hand, questions about my health and doings, at least a curiosity as to how I had passed the years. But you meet me, not merely with lack of warmth, but with positive coldness. Nay, you were shocked, startled, frightened! You turned white, and stood still as if you saw a spirit, or as if you were caught in some crime! Yes, 'twas for all the world like that! And what was't you said? It passed me then, I was so amazed at my reception--so different from the one I had pictured all the way thither, all the weeks and months. What was't you said?" "Some word of surprise, I suppose; something of no meaning." "Nay, it had meaning, too. I felt that, though I put it aside for the time. Something about the night--ah, yes: 'to-night of all nights.' And me of all men. Why so? Why to-night in particular? Why am I the most inconvenient visitor, and why _to-night_? Tell me that! Tell me--I have the right to know!" "Nay, if you work yourself up into a fury so--" "'Tis no senseless fury, madam! There's reason at the bottom of it, my lady! I must know, and I will know, what it is that my visit interferes with. You were not going out, I can see by your dress. Nor expecting company. Unless--no, it couldn't be that! You're not capable of that! You are my wife, you are Margaret Faringfield, William Faringfield's daughter. God forgive the mistrust--yet every husband with an imagination has tortured himself for an instant sometime with that thought, suppose his wife's heart _might_ stray? I've heard 'em confess the thought; and even I--but what a hell it was for the moment it lasted! And how swiftly I put it from me, to dwell on your tenderness in the old days, your pride that has put you above the hopes of all men but me, the unworthy one you chose to reach down your hand to from your higher level!" "So you have harboured _that_ suspicion, have you?" she cried, with flashing eyes. "No, no; harboured it never! Only let my perverse imagination 'light, for the space of a breath, on the possibility, to my unutterable torment. All men's fancies play 'em such tricks now and then, to torture them and take down their vanity. Men would rest too easy in their security, were it not so." "A man that suspects his wife, deserves to lose her allegiance," cried Margaret, with a kind of triumphant imputation of blame, which was her betrayal. He gazed at her with the dawning horror of half-conviction. "Then I have lost yours?" he asked, in a tone stricken with doubt and dread. "I didn't say so," she replied, reddening.